


Bruise

by Sherwhotreksings



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, F/M, Fluff, hardcore makeout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 00:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5226743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherwhotreksings/pseuds/Sherwhotreksings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma and Killian used to be really close, until Milah got in the way. Emma asks a now divorced Killian if she can spend the night when her apartment is being painted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to make this a one time thing, but if enough people want, I'll keep going.

Emma shyly knocks on the door of her neighbor’s apartment at midnight. 

They had been close friends for years, but his wife -ex-wife of almost a year now- Milah, had a lot to say about the two of them. When he started dating her she was jealous and controlling, and told Killian he had to dial back the time he spent with Emma. Milah had picked up on Emma’s feelings for Killian, so really she had every right to limit the time they spent together. It put a damper on their friendship for the last four years of course, and things haven’t quite been the same since they started hanging out again. Emma wouldn’t have done anything; hadn’t since she met him almost eight years ago when she drunkenly, and stupidly hit on him after trying to unlock his door, thinking it was her own, and he turned her down. 

He opens the door with a raised eyebrow and she pushes her long hair back from her face.

“Swan, to what do I owe this pleasure?” 

Years ago his voice would’ve been filled with a teasing lilt, now that’s nowhere to be found.

“They just painted my apartment this morning and the smell is still giving me a headache. Is it cool if I sleep here? Just for tonight,” she hurries.

His face softens. “Sure, Swan.” He eyes rove over her choice of pajamas, swans on the pants and a captain hook t-shirt, and she is suddenly very self conscious, realizing she wore the ones with a backstory.

She crosses her arms across her chest, trying to hide the shirt. “I’m just going to go change and I’ll be back.”

“No, you’re fine.” He reaches out to take her hand and lead her inside, but he hesitates and drops it down to his side. He turns and walks back into his apartment, leaving the door open and her standing outside. 

She sighs and steps inside, shutting the door behind her. This is going to be a long night. She walks over to the couch, picking up the soft blanket laying there and wraps it around her shoulders. She awkwardly looks around, having not been inside for a long time. Nothing much has changed (the picture of her and Killian is gone from atop the bookshelf). 

“My, uhh, heater broke a week ago, so you’re going to have to sleep in my room.” He avoids eye contact as he hands her a pile of pillows and blankets.

“Oh… it’s okay, I’m resilient, I can sleep on the couch.” She attempts humor, smiling slightly. 

“No, you’ll freeze. I have a portable heater in my room.” He motions with his head. Then walking around behind her, places his hands on her shoulders and guides her back to his small room.

She drops her stuff on the floor beside his bed, spreading everything out so she can finally get some sleep.

“Emma…” he sighs, “You know you can sleep in the bed.”

She glances up and over at it. There was a time when falling asleep in the same bed wasn’t a problem, and even happened most nights before Milah, but now it feels like a stranger’s bed.

“You know this was a bad idea. I’m just going to go take a shower and go back to the office. I have paperwork I should have completed before the weekend.” She stands up, sloppily folding blankets. 

“You need sleep. I’m sorry about all the tension, but you still need sleep and we were friends once, you’ve been in my room millions of times. This shouldn’t be weird.” 

We were friends once.

It feels like her heart is being torn apart.

She stills. He obviously thinks it’s okay if she stays, so it’s only awkward if she makes it. “You’re right. Goodnight, Killian.” Plus she really doesn’t want to go back to work.

He turns off the light as soon as she’s settled and then steps over her to climb into bed. 

She can feel him pass over her and resists the urge to reach out and grab him, beg him to make things normal again, but she doesn’t. She should have.

She wakes up in the morning to a pain up her right side. Wincing, she trudges to the bathroom, lifting her shirt as soon as she’s safely inside. A dark bruise runs from her hip to her ribcage. She must’ve slept on something really hard last night. She rubs her eyes and combs her fingers through her hair to attempt untangling some of it. 

As she leaves she literally runs into a groggy Killian. He wraps his arms around her to try and keep their balance, her hands on his chest. She blinks a few times, trying to process everything; the way she feels next to him. They spring apart.

“Let me make breakfast for you before work? Last time we- When we were- Before Milah, you never ate, always rushing around, unless I made you,” she fumbles. 

“I actually have the day off.” He fiddles with the rings on his fingers. “But I’ll never turn down food I don’t have to make.”

The ring he gave her is now on a chain around her neck, and feels like it’s burning her skin. “Everything still where it was?”

He nods. “Aye, but the mugs are on the top shelf now. Milah always knocked them off the bottom one.” He trails behind her like a scolded puppy.

Making breakfast so far is easy. She hasn’t run into any problems with her side, but she expects some trouble with the mugs. Her shirt rides up as she reaches for two mugs, and she anxiously tugs it back down before Killian can catch a glimpse of her bruise. He does anyway.

“Bloody hell, Emma what is that?” He stands up from his perch on a bar stool and rushes over to her. His fingers brush her side as he pulls up her shirt to reveal the massive bruise. 

She flinches away. “I slept on a shoe or something,” she mumbles. 

“This looks bad. I’m going to get you some pain relief cream.” He sprints to the bathroom. “This stuff is a miracle worker.” He returns with a small tube of cream and hands it to her. “Breakfast can wait as long as nothing is going to burn.”

She twists open the cap, squeezing a glob onto her fingers, but each time she brings her fingers to her side, she flinches away. “I can’t do this. It hurts too much.” She extends the cream to him. 

“You want me to?...” He trails off. 

“Would you? Sorry. I just can’t.” 

His cheeks tint with blood. kneeling down, he grabs the tube from her, obviously trying hard to avoid touching her more than necessary. He gently brushes the cream onto her skin, fingers dancing over her ribcage. She winces and he apologizes with a frown, not wanting to hurt her. Her muscles relax as she adjusts to the cold of the cream and the contrasting warmth of his fingers. He works his way down to her hip bone and the worst part of the bruise. She jumps away from him, cursing, tears leaking out of her eyes. 

“You don’t have to do this, but it will help. Promise, love.” 

She hasn’t heard that endearment for a long long time. 

He pulls her closer with his other arm, hand on her left hip. She squirms as he tries again. 

“Seriously. This is going to hurt worse if you do that.” 

She takes a deep breath.

His fingers glide over her hip. “There. All done.” 

They stand frozen for a beat, his hands on her hips, her hand on his shoulder. He slides her shirt down, smoothing it into place.

“You did overreact just a little.” He stands and she smacks him. 

“Shut up.” 

“I did for far too long.” Tipping his head he rubs the back of his neck and looks up at her through his eyelashes. “I shouldn’t have let Milah control me like that, the second she said that I should’ve broken up with her.. Honestly, I don’t want to shut up like that again. I missed this, us.” He waits to gauge her reaction. 

“Me too, but she had a point. We did spend a lot of time together.”

The blush from earlier returns with a vengeance. “Ah, well, there’s that too.”

“Too?” She furrows her eyebrows.

“Yeah, I… Nevermind.” He ducks away from her, disappointment in his eyes.

“Killian?” 

“Milah wasn’t the person I should have dated years ago,” he says turning slightly.

She grabs his shirt collar and their lips collide. His hand slides up her side and into her hair, twisting his fingers in it. They exhale together, but rather than break apart, they let it fuel their passion. He sucks her bottom lip into his mouth, biting it softly. She responds like a bolt of lightning coursing through her, pressing herself flat against him. She rolls her hips just enough to get a reaction out of him. He breaks away from her mouth to kiss a path down her neck to her clavicle, leaving her breathless and panting.

“I thought the same,” she gasps out. “Don’t stop doing that!” She breathes out as Killian’s lips leave her skin to give some attention back to her lips. 

“I couldn’t go any lower. Your shirt has a crew neck.” He looks pointedly down. 

She nudges him back and with one fluid motion, her shirt is off and on the floor. They stand together for what feels like minutes. Emma getting more and more self conscious of her tan bra with the black lace embellishments. It’s not her sexiest bra by far; in fact, it’s probably one of her least sexy ones, but she didn’t think she’d need to wear a nice one while sleeping at a friend’s house. 

“Are you just going to stand there or are you going to kiss me?” She questions, fingers running down his abs and into his baggy sweatpants, skimming the elastic of his underwear. 

It’s all the prompting he needs. 

His eyes flash and he pushes them into the wall by the fridge.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are awesome, so here's another chapter. There's a slight timeline change for those of you who read the 1st chapter before I edited it (6 years changed to 8) Definitely the heavier side of T on this one.

There’s clothing strewn all over Killian’s apartment. Her shirt and pants in the kitchen, his shirt and her bra by the couch, his pants and their underwear in a trail down the hallway to his bedroom. She really doesn’t want to pick it all up. She’s also pretty sure they broke a lamp or picture frame or something in the living room. 

She twirls her ring around as she slips the chain back on and recalls the moment Killian realized she was wearing it. It was right after her back had slammed into the wall. It was like a slap in the face, almost quite literally, because the force of her hitting the wall made the ring swing up from her cleavage and smack him in the chest. 

“You’re- you still wear the ring?” He freezes, one hand on the unbruised side of her rib cage, the other hovering over the ring in question.

“Yeah, I never stopped actually.” She makes eye contact with him.

“I’m glad because you have no idea how attracted I am to you with that around your neck.” His hand skims across the top of her bra.

“I have a pretty good idea.” She presses her thigh into him, making him groan. 

Killian turns over next to her, pulling her closer to him under the covers, lacing their fingers together. “It was my- Liam’s-” 

She cuts him off with a tender kiss, pulling his arm over her bare waist. “You don’t have to explain.” 

He smiles against her lips. “I appreciate the sentiment, but it doesn’t hurt anymore, Swan. I’m not the same man I was four years ago.” 

She tilts her head, waiting for him to go on. She’s not going to say she isn’t disappointed because she’d be lying, she’s glad he’s not the broken man who would knock on her door in the middle of the night for comfort after a nightmare about his brother dying, but she’s sad that she didn’t get to be the one to see him overcome it. 

“Before he died, he gave me that ring and told me it would protect me. At the time I joked about how it hadn’t helped him any. He said it was a dying brother’s wish, so it had to work. When I heard about the guy you were going after, that murderer, I hoped it would do the same for you. I never expected you to keep it all these years.” With his free hand, he caresses her face, one finger brushing across her cheek bone and down to her chin. 

She wiggles closer to him, tucking herself into his side, and throwing a leg over his. “Walsh asked me to marry him.” 

Killian jerks from shock, looking down at her.

She shrugs. “As long as we’re sharing personal things.”

“When was that? I thought you broke up after I proposed to Milah.”

“We did. He proposed after he saw my reaction to your announcement. He thought the reason why I was sad was because I wanted him to propose. It wasn’t.”

He kisses the top of her head, wrapping his arms even tighter around her.

“He was the safe choice. He was nice, boring, but nice. He said he would’ve taken care of me. I didn’t want him though. I was just crushed from-” she stops herself from saying what she really wants to say. 

From the love of my life proposing to someone else.

Instead she gestures blankly to the room. 

“I wouldn’t have asked Milah to marry me if I knew how you felt.” 

She sighs, “Let’s not talk about this anymore. It happened and I know I brought it up, but let’s just enjoy right now.”

“Aye. I can do that, love. How’s the bruise?” 

“It hurts less,” Emma says, running a hand over the slightly less purple bruise on her side.

“Oh I wasn’t talking about that one.” His fingers lightly press into the five small bruises on her thigh closes to him. “I was talking about these. Or maybe these.” He brushes his lips over the small spotting of hickies on her neck. 

“Those,” she rolls on top of him, sitting up to straddle his lap, “are just fine.” 

Her hair cascades over her shoulders covering her breasts and Killian pouts. “I want to cut off your hair at your shoulders. It’s offended me one too many times.” 

She scrunches up her face. “Then I’d have to cut off your hand. You’re not touching my hair. Besides, when has it offended you before?”

“It hasn’t.” He tangles his hands in her hair, playing with it softly before moving it out of the way. “And if you cut off my hand how would I work?”

“You’d have to get a hook!” Emma laughs.

“Then I wouldn’t be able to do this!” He runs his fingers over her, relishing the feeling of her arching into his hands. 

“I could call you captain hook! You already have a crew. You’re halfway to pirate already.”

“You’re really going to say that after what we just did?” He smirks up at her.

“That was second mate on a scale of deckhand to pirate.” 

That sure wipes the cockiness off his face. 

“It was amazing, but more ‘tender lover’ than ‘dashing rapscallion’.”

“I can do pirate if you want pirate, love,” he growls, flipping her over and pinning her wrists above her head in one well timed movement. 

“Believe me, as much as I’d like you to make me scream your name, we still need breakfast and this can wait until after.”

“Are you sure?” He grinds into her, making her moan and arch into him, but her self control wins out.

“Yes. At least let me clean the kitchen up.” 

“Fiiiiiiine,” he draws out, letting her escape from under him before following her into the kitchen, still completely naked. “Never cook naked, darling,” he calls out after her. 

She scoops up his boxers along the way, shimmying into them as she goes.

“You minx. What am I supposed to wear?”

“Nothing,” she calls over her shoulder, darting into the kitchen.

Breakfast is reheated and eaten faster than what is deemed safe and now they’re cuddling on the couch after he showed her what “a real pirate acts like.” 

She grabs the blanket at the end of the couch and throws it over her and Killian.

“Maybe if you put actual clothes on you wouldn’t be so cold,” he teases, running a finger up and down her side, making her squirm.

She wraps her arms around him, snuggling closer to his bare chest for warmth. He smooths her hair back with his free hand.

“You’re bloody beautiful, you know that, right?” He grins at her shy smile. 

“Someone may have told me that earlier.” She plays with his dark chest hair, pressing a soft kiss to his sternum. “You’ve always felt like this?”

“That you’re the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen? Aye.” His eyes burrow into her soul. 

She can’t find the words to tell him, so she kisses him. She moves up his torso enough to slide her lips over his, sucking gently on his top one. She breaks away slowly. “I wasn’t talking about that.” 

“What were you talking about then?” He threads his fingers into the hair at the base of her scalp. 

“Your feelings for me.”

“Oh. Those.” He winks at her. “Since the day I met you.”

“But you never asked me out? We had three years before Milah.”

“Ah, but when I met you, you had just temporarily broken up with Neal. The rebound guy never gets the girl. Besides, that only lasted a few weeks and when you officially broke up with him, you started dating Walsh two months later. I figured I’d never have a chance with you, so I had to move on, enter Milah.” He boops her nose with his finger.

“You have a chance now.”

“Patience, Swan. You’re ruining the moment.” He shushes her. 

She pulls a face.

“Emma, would you like to go on a date with me?”  
“I’d love to,” she giggles.


End file.
